Principles for Training Memory--What Family Caregivers Should Know

December 18, 2012

Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley

Guest Information

Episode Description

Tony Buzan, an internationally renowned expert on the thinking process, is the world’s foremost expert in Mental Literacy, http://www.thinkbuzan.com/intl. He describes his career, his own experience with family caregiving, and what led to his interest in training memory. He explains his work in developing, applying and promoting memory training and describes the memory training services he and his team provide, the people to whom these services are provided and how the services benefit them. He discusses memory challenges that affect children, young adults, and all adults as they age normally. He explains the principles for memory training to improve memory at various ages, and help for family caregivers caring for family members affected by incurable health conditions. He says what more he would like to do and see done to improve memory of children and adults, and he shares his messages for mental healthcare professionals and family caregivers.

Family Caregivers Unite!

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Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home.
They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney.
And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.

Dr. Gordon Atherley

Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.

Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.